One thing I’ve realized is this: It’s FAR easier to work for an employer than it is to develop durable passive income streams for the average person. Why? Because working for an employer in a place that “needs” you means that it’s possible to show up and give a 50% effort. You can show up, put in your time, go home, have a beer, watch TV, and rinse and repeat all without REALLY having to put in the effort.

Amazing that you saved between 50% to 75% living in NYC…I think that is one thing holding me back…the cost of living here. I’d like to invest in real estate, but I can barely afford to buy a place to live. I don’t need a large income to be happy, but I probably do need an income to support living in NYC as we don’t plan on leaving. The only thing I’m doing at the moment is saving in my 401K, IRA and a I dabble in stocks and P2P lending.

Quick story: Remember that $1.18 I found in the couch? Even when that increased to $30 to $50 a day, it still wasn’t enough to live on. So I looked for other options. In August 2008, after people started to know who I was and how I could help them pass the LEED certification exam through my blog, I wrote an ebook. It included all the information I knew about passing this exam, and I sold it on my blog for $19.95.

​Affiliate marketing is the practice of partnering with a company (becoming their affiliate) to receive a commission on a product. This method of generating income works the best for those with blogs and websites. Even then, it takes a long time to build up before it becomes passive. If you want to get started with affiliate marketing check out this great list of affiliate marketing programs.
In February 2007, Pat Flynn was working at an architecture firm making $38,000 a year. He mulled boosting his earning power by getting an architecture license, but the process would likely take six to eight years. When he heard about getting a credential in sustainable design and environmentally friendly building called Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), he decided to go for that, as no one in his department had it. The one problem? The exam was so challenging, just one-third of test-takers passed.
Make sure your tenants understand that the rent is due in your PO box by a certain day. I recommend using a post office box to avoid tenants coming to your home. Understand how much you can legally charge for a late payment, usually a trivial amount like $15 after a grace period. Explain to new tenants your policy on the eviction process, i.e. when do you start the process when rent is late.

- HubPages.com is a content community for writers. Members (referred to as "Hubbers") are given their own sub-domain, where they can post content rich articles (known as Hubs). As a Hubber, you earn revenue primarily from Google AdSense (you need your own Adsense account) and other advertising vehicles such as, Kontera, and the eBay and Amazon Affiliate programs. There is a 60:40 revenue split and it’s achieved by alternating the code used in advertisements: Your code will be displayed 60% of the time, and HubPages' code 40%. Same as Squidoo, traffic dropped heavily due to Google's changes but the site is still wildly popular. Currently it’s one of the 500 most visited US sites on the Internet.

​Network marketing, or multi-level marketing, seems to be on the rise. Companies such as Young Living Oils, Avon, Pampered Chef, and AdvoCare are all multi-level marketing companies. You can earn passive income through network marketing by building a team underneath you (often referred to as a down line.) Once you have a large team you can earn commissions off of their sales without having to do much.
Seeing the residential real estate boom coming, I started buying single-family rentals in 2002. I learned a lot about real estate investing and passive income properties over the next five years. As someone that has flipped houses as well as managed a group of rental properties, the best advice I can offer is to know yourself and how much time you are willing to spend on the business.
As a general rule, the passive activity loss rules are applied at the individual level. Although Internal Revenue Code Section 469 was enacted to discourage abusive tax shelters, its impact extends far beyond shelters to virtually every business or rental activity whether reported on Schedules C, F, or E, as well as to flow through income and losses from partnerships, S- Corporations, and trusts. Generally, the law does not apply to regular C-Corporations although it does have limited application to closely held corporations.
Do you want to earn $100, $1000 — or even more — on the side? You can start earning extra income today with the help of this list of ideas I’ve put together. Spend an hour or two each day working on items that are practical for you, and you can build alternative income sources to help you improve your financial situation While many of the items on this list are passive income ideas, not all of them are. Some items require you to actively work for success.
A perfect example of the Active Problem Solving + Automation concept is in my online courses I’ve created over the years, or my free webinars I’ve created more recently Each of my online courses and webinars are targeted to help people with specific problems, whether that’s in the area of affiliate marketing, podcasting, building a brand, and so forth. I am always improving upon the courses, but they are also evergreen for my audience.

If you need cash flow, and the dividend doesn’t meet your needs, sell a little appreciated stock. (or keep a CD ladder rolling and leave your stock alone). At the risk of repeating myself, whether you take cash out of your portfolio in the form of “rent”, dividend, interest, cap gain, laddered CD…., etc. The arithmetic doesn’t change. You are still taking cash out of your portfolio. I’m just pointing out that we shouldn’t let the tail wag the dog. IOW, the primary goal is to grow the long term value of your portfolio, after tax. Period. All other goals are secondary.

Now, if you choose to deliver part or all of your course in video format, you can use professional video hosting sites like Wistia or Vimeo. Beside giving you the option of removing the hosting company’s logo, these services also provide analytics which can show you how effective your video is at holding your audience’s attention. Alternatively, you can use litmos, a learning management system that enables you to create an online course with your own branding, domain name, and landing page. There is no percentage cut taken from your revenue like Udemy. Instead there is a monthly fee for their service.
I just wanted to say how nice it is to see such a positive exchange between strangers on the Internet. Seriously, not only was this article (list) motivating and well-drafted, the tiny little community of readers truly were a pleasant crescendo I found to be the cause of an inward smile. Thank you, everyone, and good luck to you all with your passive income efforts!! 🙂
It is very important to understand that contacting a “professional” to learn how to do this only results in them trying to sell me crap properties (whether high end or low end). I’ve tried contacting realtors out of state, and they attempt to sell me crap or someone else’s problem. No one has a vested interest in actually helping someone or teaching them about how to get an out of state rental. very frustrating. I could go out tomorrow and buy a rental in my city, but that is the last place I want to own one. Anyone? Are there an real people on here?
If an investor puts $500,000 into a candy store with the agreement that the owners would pay the investor a percentage of earnings, that would be considered passive income as long as the investor does not participate in the operation of the business in any meaningful way other than placing the investment. The IRS states, however, that if the investor did help manage the company with the owners, the investor's income could be seen as active since the investor provided "material participation."
Yes, good point about not blatantly copying other people’s hard work. I should have said in my original post that I would NEVER do that. I have eight years’ of University education behind me which resulted in three degrees, including a Masters. If I learned one thing at college, it is that plagiarism is, as you say, SO not cool. Not the done thing. I plan to give full attribution to the originating author and paste a link to their website on my website so my subscribers can follow up the data with the source if they choose to.
No shit. It’s about having a finite ratio of work to income. I can put 100 hours of work into an information product and sell it 10,000 times for $100 each.Find me somewhere else I can make $10,000 an hour, remembering that brain surgeons and actors spent literally tens of thousands of hours developing their skill set, and I’ll be happy to switch to that. I’ll then work an hour a month and forget about passive income.
I will share what we did, because it’s an incredible success story. We used an existing tax loophole where if you sell your primary residence (after having lived there at least two years) you get to keep your profit tax-free. So, we stair-stepped. We bought house after house, at least two years apart, used the profit money to pay down on the next house (so on and so forth, yadda yadda) building up equity as we went along… and now, we own a $600,000 house debt-free. And now we are using our paid-off home as leverage to borrow money to buy commercial buildings to rent out. I like commercial because it’s a BUSINESS transaction… kids, pets, other wear and tear that you see with residential rentals is nonexistent. People take care of their business space much better than residential. You have to be in a good area for renting out commercial – a thriving business community – to make this work. But that’s how we “made it”, and though it took 15 years, we will have residual income to take care of us when we’re old enough to retire. People made fun of us for moving so much, but who’s laughing now? 😉 Oh, and our child only had to change schools once (and we wanted to anyway) because we stayed in the same general area as we moved around. We were careful not to disrupt his life too much.
Inspired by you, I started a tax/personal finance a month ago. I figured if it works out, it will create a good side income for me. If not, at least I can use the blog to build my brand as a tax lawyer. Other than that, my current investment portfolio is heavily focused on index funds because of its historical performance and tax & cost efficiency. Right now my dividends income every year is about $14,000. I also have a good amount of unrealized capital gains every year from my investment, though I don’t count the capital gains as my passive income as they are paper gains, at least for now.
Now, with all those dog owners across the globe buying your new ebook on how to help their pit bulls lose weight with Açai cleanses (the keyword research your man in Mumbai did determined that dog training and antioxidant weight loss were hot niches)--you can just check in every once in a while to make sure your outsourced VA is facilitating the transfers from your ClickBank account over to your checking account, and while you're not working, you can hang out in whatever fine restaurant his Internet research has determined is happening this month on your particular island of Fiji.
I do remember you mentioning that & how it was your ticket to exit softly and give you time to build the passive income side. Most likely when I do exit it will either be through a sale of the business which would come along with a employment contract or if a worthy successor(s) can take it over, then the business is just another annuity throwing off income. Anyway, I’d enjoy writing a guest article after I survive the next few weeks of work and weddings.
Domain names cannot be replicated. If one is taken, the only recourse would be to approach the owner to discuss a sale. While there are other variations you could choose, sometimes owning a certain domain (especially if it is attached to your business) can be worth the premium. Often, people will scout out domain names that are still available, buy them, and then sit on them in order to sell them down the road. Depending on who may want the domain down the road, you could sell it for a large markup.
Real estate crowdsourcing allows you to surgically invest as little as $5,000 into a residential or commercial real estate project for potentially 8 – 15% annual returns based off historical data. Such returns are much better than the average private equity, CD, bond market, P2P lending, and dividend investing returns. With P2P lending, borrowers can sometimes default and leave you with nothing. At least with real estate crowdsource investing, there’s a physical asset that’s backing your investment.
Well, my first book project didn’t generate the interest I would have liked to, but another set of products suredid. In 2013, I launched a course on Udemy, which grew so fast, it became my biggest income earner of all time. That course resulted in a series of books (audio, digital, and print), a not-so-passive podcast, and even lead to my now full-time gig: SuperLearner Academy. Though I run the company full time, it is, for all intents and purposes, an automated business.
Similiar to Adsense, Media.net powers the Yahoo! Bing Network Contextual Ads and is probably the second largest contextual advertising company in the world. I've been running some Media.net ads for a few months and the income was very similiar to adsense. Bear in mind that their approval process is a bit more extensive than Google AdSense. -One has to get a certain number of page views monthly to get an account with them.
Real Estate Crowdsourcing – After selling my SF rental house in mid-2017 for 30X annual gross rent, I reinvested $550,000 of the proceeds ($810,000 total) in real estate crowdfunding, based in San Francisco. My goal is to take advantage of cheaper heartland real estate with much higher net rental yields (8% – 12% vs. 2% – 3.5% in SF) and diversify away from expensive coastal city real estate which is now under pressure due to new tax policy which limits SALT deduction to $10,000 and new mortgage interest deduction on mortgages of $750,000 from $1,000,000 for 2018 and beyond.
Affiliate marketing means you sign up with a company and/or entrepreneur and sell their products. For example, if you start a tech website, you could become an affiliate of a web hosting or anti-virus software company. You can earn hundreds or even thousands of dollars each month if your website receives a decent amount of web traffic and you have thousands of email subscribers. Being an affiliate marketer takes dedication and time. You need to build traffic via your website, email marketing and social media. Is this for you? You be the judge.
Hi Logan, thanks for perfect article on passive income theme! I am a newbie in this passive income thing but everything I read here seems obvious to me. Why not create a passive income, right? So I started googling about making passive income via internet because I like things connected to the web and I think that this will be a huge thing (it already is) and I found this article which seems that is probably very new but in the ebook there are great informations about passive income, at least in my POV (newbie POV). Is this a legit website or can it actually work? I want to expand on that because my 9 – 5 s*cks… Here is the URL: https://cashwithoutjob.online
I have a total of three CDs left. There is no way in hell I’m selling them after holding them for 4+ years so far to take the penalty. The CDs are for 7 years. That would be completely counterproductive. As a result, I feel very stuck with ever getting my CD money back if I wanted to. If the CDs were for just 1 or 2 years, I agree, it doesn’t matter as much. But combine a 7 year term with 4%+ interest is too painful to give up.
When I purchase an existing online business, I look for cash flow over the past year and where the money comes from. I want the sources to be more passive so that it does not take a lot of my time. Also, typically I will make an offer that is 18 – 24 months of profit so that I know that I will get my money back within the next two years. I hope that helps!
Finally, I imagine the biggest debate with my ranking is Creating Your Own Product as the #1 passive income source. If most people have never created their own product, then it’s easy to give it a thumbs down. There won’t be much complaint about Private Equity Investing being in last place because most people are not accredited investors. But given I believe that plenty of people can create their own product if they try, pushback is inevitable because a lot of people simply don’t try!

You are also free to choose a fund that is based on any index that you want. For example, there are index funds set up for just about every market sector there is — energy, precious metals, banking, emerging markets — you name it. All you have to do is decide that you want to participate, then contribute money and sit back and relax. Your stock portfolio will then be on automatic pilot.

A Risk Score of 10 means no risk. A Return Score of 1 means the returns are horrible compared to the risk-free rate. A Feasibility score of 10 means everybody can do it. A Liquidity Score of 1 means it’s very difficult to withdraw your money without a massive penalty. An Activity Score of 10 means you can kick back and do nothing to earn income. To make the ranking as realistic as possible, every score is relative to each other. Furthermore, the return criteria is based off trying to generate $10,000 a year in passive income.
I’m somewhat embarassingly reminded of Harry Potter and the concept of “Horcruxes” here, in that the goal is to find a piece of your value, and impart it into an inanimate object or product, Voldemort Style (did I really just make a Harry Potter reference?) Anyways, whatever. If you want passive income, you have to think about the value you rent out or own. Or, you need to buy something valuable that other people would like to use (I love the idea of a 3D Printer). Then put it into something that can be sold or rented more passively. Maybe you have a car that sits in the driveway, or a vacation home that is empty half the time. Maybe you just have some funny jokes you could put into a YouTube video and run ads on. At some point, you have to “transfer” the value into something that can work for you — that something is an asset.
A REIT is a company that owns, operates or finances real estate and allows anyone to invest in portfolios of real estate assets, the same way as stocks: you can purchase individual stock or exchange-traded fund (ETF). You can then earn a share of the income produced through the real estate investment without having to own, manage or finance a property.

That $200,000 a year might sound like a lot to you, but the median home price in San Francisco is roughly $1.6 million or almost eight times our annual passive income. For a family of three in 2018, the Department of Housing and Urban Development declared that income of $105,700 or below was "low income." Therefore, I consider us firmly in the middle class.

In real estate, your passive opportunities are in private lending and rental properties. Private lending commonly involves lending funds to a real estate investor or business in exchange for a set return and length of time. (Full disclosure: I am co-partner of a turnkey investment company.) Turnkey rental properties allow the investor to be as hands-off as they like. This means a turnkey company purchases, rehabs, tenants and manages the property. To truly make this a passive investment, turnkey companies do all the work for you.
They also launched an incredible Retirement Planning Calculator that pulls in real data from your linked accounts to run a Monte Carlo simulation model to output the most likely results of your financial future. I strongly suggest you run your own numbers, play around with the income and expense variables, and see how you stack up. It’s all free and easy to use.
When most people think of investing opportunities, they think of stocks, bonds, and precious metals. While these are still some of the most common ways to invest, the platforms have evolved, and there are more options than ever. Gone are the days of mountains of paperwork, high brokerage fees and unattainable account minimums. Now you can invest on your own terms.

But despite his success in real estate, Carson isn't interested in dipping into the market in Ecuador. "[T]here's no way I want to buy anything anywhere in a foreign country. I'm totally a local investor. I like to look at it and understand the market. I can't understand enough here — the political system, everything else — about buying. Some people do, but it's just not my thing," he said.

While passive income isn’t always easy to come by, it is possible to create residual revenue streams — even as a beginner. Remember, not all options will make sense for you. And chances are you’ll find one that sounds the most promising. Not sure which that may be? The best way to find out is just to simply get started. Many of the options on this list are free or at least offer a free trial, which gives you a chance to try before you buy!
I have only dabbled in drop-shipping before when I had an eCommerce platform 6 years ago or so. I think it is something that you could do on the side, but you would want to do in depth research on the industry you want to get into before setting up shop. It may be a little less passive up front, but over time you could take your hands off the wheel.
2. This article isn’t intended to be about making $50k per year from $0 to start with. This is intended to show different ways that it’s possible to generate $50k in passive income. As for your rental property comment, check out RealtyShares or other similar companies. You can be a rental property owner without having to run the business. You can be a limited partner and just invest in real estate, and leave the actual work to the general partner. Basically, there are options to make $50k without working, but like the first paragraph says – front load your life!

Your articles are so in-depth and helpful, I’ve never seen anything quite like it. I am a 22-yr old finishing my last semester of college, studying Computer Science and Psychology. I’m in a really good place with my finances (2k savings, no student debt, only expenses essentially rent, groceries, and utilities) and I want to get ahead financially so I can pay my parents back and save up a lot.

Personally, my experience with Amazon thus far has been good - a few of my short eBooks generate steady passive income on weekly basis with zero additional effort from my side. One thing to note though - Amazon pays 70% royalty on each eBook sold only if your eBook is priced between $2.99 to $9.99. Less than or higher than that pricing structure, the royalty decreases to 35%.of your book’s listed price.
Money from dividends, for example, are taxed at a lower rate than money from a job. A business owner who works in the company she or he founded would have to pay more self-employment payroll taxes compared to someone who merely had a passive interest in the same limited liability company who would pay only income taxes. In other words, the same income earned actively would be taxed at a higher rate than if it were earned passively.
A) Live, breathe, eat, and sleep this activity that is their passion. It's what they most care about. There's no way they'd give up this active, creative endeavor for a life of reclining on a beach chair. They cannot wait to wake up another day and spend another full day, from dawn to dusk, engaging in this project, building and creating things within this realm, giving this gift to the world. And, my guess is these people...
What I’m doing: I use this site to write out goals like 1) Generating $200,000 a year working 4 hours a day or less, 2) Trying to make winning investments, and 3) Keeping track of my passive income streams with free financial tools. My site and the community helps keep me accountable for progress. It’s important I do what I say, otherwise, what the hell is the point? You should consider starting a site or at least a private journal. Write out your specific goals, tell several close friends and stick to the plan.

Hi Logan, thanks for perfect article on passive income theme! I am a newbie in this passive income thing but everything I read here seems obvious to me. Why not create a passive income, right? So I started googling about making passive income via internet because I like things connected to the web and I think that this will be a huge thing (it already is) and I found this article which seems that is probably very new but in the ebook there are great informations about passive income, at least in my POV (newbie POV). Is this a legit website or can it actually work? I want to expand on that because my 9 – 5 s*cks… Here is the URL: https://cashwithoutjob.online